Why video games are made of tiny triangles

Inside your favorite games - Red Dead Redemption 2, Fortnite, PUBG, Rocket League - you’ll find millions of tiny triangles.
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Games today are meticulously detailed. They’re mysterious and heartwarming, and colorful and stylized. And that makes them a technical challenge. Though computing power has skyrocketed, gamemakers keep competing to add more detail to their games, pushing the limits of what even the newest technology can compute. Game technology needs to constantly keep up with gamemakers’ creative ambitions.
Triangles are a key part of how these gorgeous, detailed games appear on your screen - the hidden heroes we should all thank as we play. This simple shape helps keep the number of computations needed for each detail as low as possible, allowing the player's computer to process these elaborate games.
Watch the video above to find out how triangles make room for creators to build the beautiful games that exist today.
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out www.vox.com.
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[@CleoAbram]

Thanks for watching everyone! I want to share my new favorite place on KZbin: the Vox Video Lab, our new home for exclusive creator commentary, bonus clips, and more. If you become a member, you'll be helping us make more of the videos you love. And I'll be doing something for the Video Lab soon too! I hope you check it out: www.vox.com/join

[@obeytweety]

Cleo Abram hey you look like Keira Knightly !

[@ssharma1201]

you're really beautiful 😃❤

[@shabbufateh]

Hey... Your waist compared to your shoulder looks really slim. Just something i observed. Doesn't mean i wasn't focusing on video 😂

[@FrankSklar]

You guys all creepy... anyway great explanation in the video!

[@mud6461]

so is the earth made up of triangles

[@arvaborelius7269]

*CPU'S ARE JUST ROCKS WE TRICKED INTO THINKING*

[@Freakmenn]

This dude is on another level of being that we will never understand.

[@DwAboutItManFr]

Implying the rocks are thinking

[@WeeWeeJumbo]

This comment is too good for a venue like KZbin

[@MultiSciGeek]

That's deep. We're just tissue tricked into thinking

[@sapientpearwood613]

Dont credit this guy for being original, because he isnt. Someone else made this quote up. I believe it was Terry Pratchett.

[@katycrawford8101]

vox: answering questions you never knew you had

[@campkira]

Wis it a little shorter.

[@azzurirodrinata7646]

Well i have knew about this when im 12 m8 Lol

[@loop5720]

@@azzurirodrinata7646 you're such a badass

[@jacooo06]

Azzuri Rodrinata Einstein over here

[@lracfilib]

@@sweatysweak roblox

[@LordofBroccoli]

0:38 "But you never see them." Well someone hasn't played Fallout 76...

[@christiansullivan3002]

Oof

[@mcstevo3142]

Oof

[@anasafzal1043]

Oof

[@bokey9346]

Oof

[@prime201]

Oof

[@maroverdose]

Thank you tiny triangles, very cool.

[@Crushenator500]

Very cool and very legal

[@hellatze]

It not just triangle. Material. Rig. Etc

[@mysecondaccount7887]

"You're gonna see the dust fly off" - all thanks to raymarching ..."Everything is made of triangles." 😒

[@jeagous]

lets all love lain

[@elytra19]

dani

[@JustinY.]

How do you do, fellow gamers?

[@rachelguzzo1602]

Justin Y.+ I’m in school gamer

[@t65bx25]

KSP

[@hmmm9658]

gamers rise up

[@brokeindio5072]

Nothing much, Just casually harassing minorities

[@Blazing_Glory]

Why do I see you everywhere?

[@goat6354]

This should be popular now after the UE5 reveal.

[@ganeshvenkatachalam3203]

I came straight from the cherno

[@pxrxy]

Recommended by the algorithm

[@sunilgowda2056]

Millions and millions of triangles

[@broken414_]

@@sunilgowda2056 Billions*

[@Nick-kb2jc]

People should go watch the computerphile series

[@Germania9]

Who knew Keira Knightley knows a lot about games?

[@Scarletraven87]

@@kahoot9659 Hear hear

[@rameshyashwanth1881]

Natalie Portman

[@FindecanorNotGmail]

"Not even their parents could tell them apart"

[@Germania9]

​@@kahoot9659 You're right, it's Giada De Laurentiis.

[@Scubadog_]

@@kahoot9659 tomato tomato

[@legend2memba]

PS5: someone said... triangles?

[@recoolify]

i know dude 😂

[@Coochiedestroyer6969]

∆

[@rozumov]

what???

[@rozumov]

@Crimson Epitaph what does the comment mean?

[@dvorak826]

It's a tall fan

[@kunwoododd2154]

But this is only half the story. During the development process, everything in the video game is usually made of rectangles. However, at the end of the development, all the rectangles are converted to triangles. This is because it's much easier for game developers to work with rectangles, but it's easier for GPUs to work with triangles.

[@TheDanielLivingston]

KunWoo Dodd In general this is true, but the word you’re looking for is ‘quad’, not ‘rectangle’

[@ferrettankror1]

I am a pro 3d Artist for video games, this is half true, we basically do what ever is easier. Bothe Triangles and quads are used in development. It's usually about half and half.

[@donloder1]

naaaam n-gon ftw

[@alancarter7663]

@@donloder1 heresy

[@kunwoododd2154]

@@TheDanielLivingston Oh of course "quad" is the most correct term, but "rectangle" is more accessible to the average KZbin comment reader.

[@evaristegalois6282]

Here’s why video games are made from tiny triangles: Lvl 1 : Squares Lvl 100 : Triangles *_That’s how shapes work_*

[@aurora7554]

I literally see you everywhere, are you trying to be Justin Y?

[@tillyj]

thats how the mafia works

[@sanjay.skumar7467]

Gonna make you shape like that

[@DwAboutItManFr]

Voxels ar level 300

[@kaylubproductions4517]

Haha

[@happykiller14]

Should also be mentioned that they make the models using squares then subdivide it into triangles. It's just way easier to thing spatially when dealing with squares and when you're all set you can just press a button to turn it into triangles.

[@przemysawgumienny2621]

And that's why NVIDIAs HQ is shaped like a triangle.

[@SingleHacksRoadto1M]

*NoVideo r/AyyMD xd

[@usethefooorce]

3:01 the singular of "vertices" is "vertex"

[@888pil]

i used to study games design but switched over to animation with a focus on 3d, the hardest part was switching over from triangles to my teachers telling me everything's gotta be quads. love that you guys cover these kinda topics!

[@overdev1993]

usually it doesnt matter if you modelling something for gaming or photorealistic 3d. you have to model with quads all the time except you are talking about calculating those things in a program

[@888pil]

@@overdev1993 sorry, mind explaining more? i remember in my games studios we'd use tris in a lot of our assets and environments, but my 3d teacher now is quite strict about no tris or n-gons. i don't know if these are just the preferences of my teachers though, I'm still just a beginner!

[@overdev1993]

@@888pil game engine only can deal with tris. so you have to convert all the quad meshes to tris oder the engines does that automatically. tris and ngons are just hard to model with atleast most of the time thats the only reason I think.

[@subashgowtham6165]

**slaps ps5** This boy can fit in so many triangles!

[@suleimanmustafa1473]

How far into a new year is it acceptable to greet "Happy New Year!"?

[@amigo2hundred]

Uptil 12am of the last day of the year !!!!

[@definitelyderek5815]

This far, plus 10 minutes

[@Arovna]

I think in France it's around the 7th of february xD

[@gonnabeok]

within 74 seconds after midnight

[@rabbitpiet7182]

I say the 10th

[@Shawn.Shooter]

I just watched a video of the Unreal Engine 5 for PS5 and came here to see why video games are made of tiny triangles.

[@andycornejo2361]

It’s literally like in real life too 😂 the shape triangle is the strongest shape

[@brandons9138]

@@andycornejo2361 It's also the most basic of the shapes. 3 sides is minimum that you need to enclose an area.

[@ayh0210]

Minecraft: No, I don't think I will

[@enot2140]

@Luc Bloom Minecraft uses polygons and not voxels for it's graphics, but it does remember terrain data in voxel form. It still gets rendered as polygons tho.

[@ednaldopereira2646]

the minecraft are made by triangles to, i k it because im doing a 3d game on java, like minecraft

[@elektra81516]

Minecraft uses triangles...

[@ayh0210]

It's just a joke.

[@Mate_Antal_Zoltan]

a triangle is half a square, so Minecraft is still just a bunch of triangles

[@TerryFoxTheMan]

Wow, really cool that you got someone as informed and knowledgeable as the head of engineering of unity! As always, really high quality and concise video! Sometimes wish these were longer.

[@MartinLabuschin]

0:01 No, that is Arthur Morgan. He died at sunrise, that's why we have AM for morning hours.

[@comradepeter87]

Oh wow I never made that connection. Truly beautiful.

[@Fitzsimmons.]

When Vox had a survey and asked what your audience wanted I said more games coverage as it's the biggest form of media now. To ignore games is to ignore modern culture. I didn't want plays or things like that but intelligent discussions about games. Vox you delivered! I'm sure it wasn't because of my request but it feels like I had a small hand in it! So happy. Great video!

[@nalaprodd]

vox: put thousands of these or maybe even millions me: oh shoot then the ps5 tech demo is more impressive

[@nimnadarajah6581]

Mike Wazzup didn’t they mention in the tech demo that the 500 statues alone had several billions of triangles?

[@RisenSlash]

@@nimnadarajah6581 millions

[@peterdemonte]

@@RisenSlash trillions

[@gabrielus123gabby]

the 3 vs 4 dots thing just blew my mind

[@24FramesOfNick]

Games are made of gamers

[@akshatshah3717]

Hey ily

[@memtub8782]

I thought u would have more replies than this, since ur channel is pretty big

[@jachimikedenis]

Memtub same

[@sevvysweetsparkles6969]

BUT THINK ABOUT IT: *A BALL IN A VIDEO GAME IS ACTUALLY MADE OF TRIANGLE S*

[@lakshaykochhar9802]

And Music is made for magicans.

[@juantelle1]

The process of translating geometry into pixels on your screen is called Rasterisation

[@Star-rq3jd]

But don't we loose the points data after raster?

[@g.hmusicc]

0:51 *_t h a t ‘ s h o t_*

[@mistakenumber7880]

Gading Surdawi *yes*

[@ManishGupta-dr4tj]

Just adding here that triangles are not only shapes that can be used for games. Many people have experimented with trapeziums also, especially in 2d games. Trapeziums are sometimes better than triangles as you can save a trapezium with 4 points where you will need 6 points for 2 triangles, leading to less memory consumption. Moreover parallel lines in a trapezium, mimic the scanlines on the screen leading to better sharpness. But after 3d games, all game engines use triangles, and thus now for 2d games as well triangles are used.

[@salmanazam9444]

An equivalent concept is used elsewhere too. In 3D printing, CAD, 3D modelling etc, objects are treated in a similar manner. For example, during simulation of 3D models, we use FEA (Finite Element Analysis) to study them with respect to physics, engineering (and even economics)... That is because a triangle is the SIMPLEST geometric shape that gives a completely closed contour/loop and or surface area. By simplest, I mean its the least number of points you can join to form a closed area. Therefore, when you divide (or construct, in this case) an object with an extremely large (but still finite) number of triangular area elements, it becomes easier for a computer to understand it...

[@ShadyForest]

That’s what I was thinking. We had to do stuff with “meshes” in my heat transfer class using some fancy engineering software whose name I forget. Basically the meshes were just triangular nets that surrounded our objects we were studying.

[@salmanazam9444]

@@ShadyForest ANSYS Fluent, COMSOL Multiphysics, ABAQUS, SolidWorks etc. Must have been one of those...

[@HarvestrX]

3:34 is where the answer is. They don't explain it technically, but most videos don't explain it at all. So, thank you to Vox for a great video. The issue is that a noncoplanar polygon is mathematically undefined (so a computer can't calculate them, and thus can't draw them). Yet all but the simplest models will have noncoplanar quads or ngons. If you take a bent quad, and create a new line between the 2 vertices where the bend happens, then you have 2 triangles. It is impossible to have a noncoplanar triangle, thus triangles guarantee your polys will render.

[@osga21]

Curiously enough the Sega Saturn rendered everything in rectangles instead of triangles. This proved to be an issue(among many others) when porting games to the console because every other game was rendered using triangles. Most devs would just set the side of a rectangle to 0, effectively making it a triangle, however this was less than ideal.

[@NiffirgkcaJ]

That's cool to know!

[@hendrairawan]

i love that u opened the video with rdr2

[@JooleanBoolean]

I'm very pleased to see behind the scenes of video games being shown in mainstream media such as Vox, but I'm a little disappointed in the execution. I would have loved to see you dig a little deeper than the video title, because that's pretty much all you said "video games are made of triangles", except with fancy Vox graphics. Don't really need to watch the rest of the video for that. Nevertheless I'm very happy to see that there is mainstream interest in the making of process of video games nowadays.

[@ChannelX24]

Its the same with 3D printing. When I make a model on CAD software its extremely detailed even if its just a simple shape. I run it though a program that turns it into an .stl file which is basically a bunch of triangles forming the shape of the object. You can control the number of triangles to change the "resolution of the model". Then when its almost ready to print the triangle stl model gets sliced through in special software and turned into g code - a series of tool paths based of of the straight lines of the triangles for each printed layer of the model. Its just amazing how stuff works when you go into the tiny details of it.

[@elliotfinn]

Lol, I'm so late but when I first got my 3D printer I didn't understand that a Gcode was specific to an individual printer, and spent so long searching online for a "Gcode file converter" to no avail.

[@ChannelX24]

@@elliotfinn Yeah totally personalized to your own machine, I wonder in the future the sensors and machine learning will be so good that we will just be able to download a file and print it with little to no prep. Like in Star Trek.

[@w8ingsim43]

I mean if you play early tomb raiders you would know really well about triangles.

[@hshuemaker]

Yay, saw they mentioned Monument Valley. That game (and its sequel) is so beautiful!

[@haresmahmood]

Stellar quality once again 👌

[@maximilienfrancoismarieisi1685]

All these graphics are amazing, but the graphics of Monarchist's heads rolling is better

[@kxam2]

Agreed

[@recoolify]

who is seeing this after that traingle video of unreal engine 5 demo😂

[@dr.christopherdiaz4473]

Digital audio uses the Fourier series to create virtually any sound out of a complex combination of sine waves. Since sine waves are triangle functions, digital audio can be thought of as a long series of tiny triangles too.

[@iluvcarz1]

3:01 the singular term for "vertices" is "vertex", not "vertice".

[@TheSoundofTanay]

*hears voice of narrator* "wow, what a soothing, beautiful voice. *sees the woman on screen*"wow. Oh my." *heart skips a beat.*

[@kaktotak8267]

"But you never see them" This girl is young.

[@CleoAbram]

Ha, fair.

[@MiloMcCarthyMusic]

What? How have you got it to say “read more”

[@Mate_Antal_Zoltan]

@@MiloMcCarthyMusic KZbin is not perfect, nothing is, there are bound to be mistakes

[@singularityhq]

When she said "This is me in red dead redemption", for a second there I thought she meant that she did the motion acting.

[@andersdenkend]

Is this Natalie Portman‘s sister?!

[@allluckyseven]

Yes, Keira Knightley.

[@BladeTheGabite]

no I'm Natalie Portman's sister. AMA

[@TiredMango1]

@@BladeTheGabite joe mama

[@brashmandicoot]

Great video! Small note: The singular of Vertices isn't Vertice, it's Vertex

[@ghazalkhubaib4213]

Vox: Everygame is madeup of small triangles. Minecraft: Am I a joke to you?

[@renaigh]

yes, even Minecraft.

[@darkengine5931]

@@renaigh Minecraft is actually made up of voxels although converted and rasterized to triangles in the end (although I think there's a good chance the RTX version just directly raytraces voxels, since voxels are faster to raytrace than triangles).

[@PaparazziVan]

Her: Its an action-adventure game with over 60 hours of stunning gameplat 0:07 Speed-runners: Its 3, actually made with mematic

[@siva2727]

Why did the console gamer crossed the road ? To render the other end of the street

[@waltersimmons9512]

Lol

[@Blackpowderdofus]

Hilarious and original

[@gab_gallard]

1997 called. He wants his joke back.

[@buildawall5803]

And They they render it tho

[@samdoubleview7628]

@@Blackpowderdofus No, it's not original. This joke is as old as it gets.

[@LettuceTrains]

I appreciate the use of a teapot in the example. (A teapot was one of the first rendered 3D objetcs, based off a real teapot. It's called the Utah Teapot)

[@vahidansari4820]

I always love your videos but being a game enthusiast, I was like OMG, they finally did a video on gaming. I hope you do another one soon... PS I love you, Vox ❤❤❤

[@JaredRix]

This video is a blessing to every designer who struggles to explain to their mom what they do lol

[@CleoAbram]

[@SenseiVeggito]

Shoutout to any 3d modelers watching this vid

[@HatchetHaro]

Just to add to the video, in the 3D modeling pipeline for animations and games, 3D models aren't made out of triangles, but quads (4-sided polygons). You can see that at 0:28 - 0:36, where you can find that the triangles fit together to form very even quads along the entire model. They are automatically converted into triangles upon being exported out to be used for games. The reason for modeling in quads versus modeling in triangles is that, while using triangles directly would result in more details with fewer polygons, creating, editing, and assigning UV maps ("unfolding" and flattening the model's surface so you can apply a 2D texture map) to models using quads is much easier and much more efficient.

[@bobcharlotte8724]

When making the Saturn, Sega didnt get the memo.

[@onepiecebarca]

Check the skin of your hand, it's made of small triangles as well. That's how it works, in order to make detailed 3D objects you need to use simple 2D objects.

[@uttisiseppe769]

Yeah unreal engine 5 for PS 5 told me hundreds of billions triangle

[@ser3rm711]

I'm gonna make a game for the ps5 with only 3 triangles

[@andycornejo2361]

Ser3rm 3 triangles is prob like a rock in a game😂

[@ser3rm711]

@@andycornejo2361 not even it would probably be smaller than a pixel

[@TheRaunaq]

For a more Complicated explanation, there are multiple types of the shader in a pipeline but the 2 main ones are called vertex shader and Fragment shader those are at least the 2 shaders you will write when you are making your first triangle in OpenGL in open GL these points are connected clockwise (if I remember correctly ) and the fragment shader will divide the points into "fragments" (or tessellation shader in DirectX) which will make it into pixels. these and dept calculations are done with something more specific math which uses Matrices usually 4D matrices that got to do with translation and rotation and scaling. So the way it works is that to display that triangle we create a viewport which acts as a camera and then through the code we send something called an MVP matrix which is basically an addition of the object's place in the world + the Camras place + the projection of the matrix. if you anyone actually read till here I need to put this out there I think I miss coding in OpenGL even though I was bad at it and also taking if you tried understanding all this you might wanna try going to learnOpenGL for just fun..

[@fasteddie9970]

Illuminati confirmed.

[@pequod4557]

Jackass

[@rubico1894]

Pythagoras confirmed

[@johnivanoplimo5172]

(Plays the X-Files Theme.)

[@shubhampreetsingh8630]

@@pequod4557 r/woooosh

[@brittaninoble]

Triangles are now my most favorite shape

[@finnorourke4861]

Oh boy I’m scared of all the ps5 comments that are gonna come in

[@RohanDaDev]

Beto

[@Ireikes]

Have you heard that ps5 draws in 50 megafarts per terashit

[@finnorourke4861]

Ireikes oh that’s nothing, I heard the Xbox one has 1gigashart per 10 terashit

[@coffeefueled9879]

Happy to know rdr2 made in this video.

[@nsa3679]

*That’s how triangles work*

[@xponen]

Triangle is not a mere "tricks" to get graphics working in computer, but triangles is actually something fundamentals to vision. In 1980s there's paper called "Interpreting Line Drawings", it explain how a 3 lines of a corner of a pyramid (basically an edge of 3 triangles) can interpret the surface of every visible objects. This mathematics/thoughts-process is still taught to this day, you can find them under same title in MIT Courseware on Artificial Intelligence.

[@dislikebot]

“Meticulously detailed games” >proceeds to state fortnite and pubg as examples

[@daniellez417]

Finally we found someone smart!

[@rravitejamavr6650]

@Kay 'Modern Disasters'? Aren't they some of the popular game's played by millions, I don't know much about gaming & it's history, can u eloborate?

[@decuno1663]

Artstyle =/= Graphics

[@rickynova834]

Pubg used to rule the world... good days

[@rickynova834]

@Nefomemes too bad m8

[@RonaldCortez]

Really great video! Glad to see Ori and the Blind Forest made the cut!

[@garretthowell8430]

anyone else get this recommended after seeing the unreal engine 5 demo?

[@ChongMcBong]

i taught myself 3d modeling while being stuck in the house for a couple of years, after having a big car crash. its fun making stuff with triangles :)

[@aleko1304]

Vox: "why video games are made of tiny triangles" conpiracy theorists: iLuMiNaTi!!!

[@Dead_Last]

Makes me warm inside, when people explain on what I do for a living.

[@renaigh]

I'm gonna guess you're either a Streamer in your moms basement or an independent game designer...

[@thebahooplamaster]

Darn. I thought they used triangles because of influence from the Illuminati. My dreams are crushed.

[@Mr_Pxtty]

In any video game related game I see you in them comments

[@orgicus]

As others already pointed out: vertex (singular), vertices (plural), not vertice. On top of that, the list of vertices (from an .obj mesh) is only part of process and just simply "translate to pixels on your screen": - that same text file has lines beginning with "f" defining faces: lists of vertex indices describing how those vertices connect as triangles. - on top of the 3D vertex coordinates and faces which defined objects in a 3D scene there's usually a 3D camera: this is perspective math is used to compute how those 3D positions would be projected onto a 2D plane (the screen) - on the GPU, just before the 3D points get computed as 2D projected points programmers can add geometry effects (vertex shaders (e.g. bend/twist/wave/etc.)) and just before the 2D projected points become pixels to be displayed on screens programmers can add image effects (fragment shaders (e.g. blur, emphasise edges (cartoon like), pixelate, etc.))) I get that it's not easy to explain the whole programmable GPU pipeline this in 5 minutes for general audience, but maybe with a few minutes too spare the full picture could be presented rather than skipping straight from 3d points, past faces, cameras, lighting, materials to pixels ? The video does shed some light into how video games work behind the scenes which is great, but to me it feels like it also sells a false hope that the full process is demystified when it barely scratches the surface. If others are interested look into GPU pipeline (for example Siggraph's Fundamentals course: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bXnRZqSLorFgh5o ) Nowadays GPUs process triangles, but a while back there were GPUs that used quads (planes with 4 vertices) instead (e.g. Diamond Edge 3D)

[@mahj]

Well, that could've been done in 30 seconds.

[@Exoclypse]

correction 3:25 : "So the game engine needs to convert curved surfaces into flat ones for the player's computer to process." The game engine doesn't convert curved surfaces. The objects are already polygonal meshes made of triangles described by vertices, usually imported from a 3D editing software, like Maya or 3ds Max. Therefore no need for any conversion. In addition, it is possible for a computer to process curved surfaces. This is the case for vector graphics and NURBS.

[@wackywong]

Vox: Everything is made of triangles. Minecraft: wut?

[@christianschuelke_one]

2:26 2010 looks so much better ?! xD

[@Yellow.1844]

0:50 is RDR2 in Japan

[@mzon772]

I hate watching videos where I know the answer, but Vox always keeps me interested. Great video

[@brans7196]

You look like the actress Keira Knightley.. 😂😂

[@welshzecorgi7903]

Damn it Jeff, did you let another clone escape the lab?!?

[@MySNova]

Vox... The channel and production team, who never ever seize to amaze me.

[@fatt_yoshi5507]

BIG CHUNGUS WILL BE THE FIRST GAME MADE WITHOUT TRIANGLES BUY NOW FOR OLNY 10000000$

[@chairchair1231]

There have been games made without triangles you noob

[@fatt_yoshi5507]

@@chairchair1231 I hate when I see people with no humor, I'm quite dissapointed

[@chairchair1231]

@@fatt_yoshi5507 in disappointed in you not being able to make a meme that could make me laugh noob

[@danielm4874]

@@chairchair1231 stfu kid

[@chairchair1231]

@@danielm4874 triggered

[@ricky_195]

I just watched the PS5 demo video. Thank God I saw this video before hand.

[@pay1370]

I'm getting flashbacks to the great fairy from the old legend of zelda

[@pax4370]

Vox making videos about games. Soooo good 😊😊

[@Islay2806]

Minecraft: ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT

[@__j__h5971]

*OOF*

[@CAxPH]

For a News channel, you guys did a decent job explaining how games work under the hood. It would be cool if you included the rendering pipeline and how a game engine takes a set of vertices, to lines, to fragments, to RGB and more. You guys just kinda showed it without any context with that OpenGL teapot.

[@error079]

You made this video just so you could play games at the office? ;)

[@campkira]

Often they are. That why a lot of channel who not game related has a video game video.

[@idaho777]

With models in video games, it's very difficult to represent curved surfaces smoothly because computers can only take in so many discrete set of points. Therefore, curved surfaces are subdivided multiple times into triangles (or quads) to replicate curved surfaces while reducing computation. Think about trying find a shape that looks like a circle in 2D. Start with a triangle then add a side to get a square, pentagon, hexagon, and so on. Eventually you'll get a shape with many sides (maybe 100) that looks close enough to a circle. Triangles act as the same for 3D.

[@itstoasty7089]

1:53 so you refer “Rendering” as in changing my render distance in Minecraft?

[@Max-up8vj]

Yup, by changing your render distance, there is less math to be performed for each frame hence you get better performance. Same for any game.

[@AveryChow]

Well render distance just tells your computer how far out it can render. If you have a low render distance, you can't see objects far away, if you have a high render distance, you can see objects that are really far away.

[@EBBsk8Norge]

one of the best videos from Vox in a while!! Keep it coming

[@Scarletraven87]

Pixels have nothing to do with triangles. You may have a whole character in the distance fit into a whole pixel. Pixels are exclusively what the graphic card ships to the screen. They are unconcrete. Triangles are surfaces of the WORKING game world, with collisions and everything.

[@T.I.N.D]

"Video games meticulously details" Me:"Games today can't be ran on my computer" I'm looking at YOU *witcher 3*

[@baddiecentral22]

I'm here because Unreal Engine 5 is out. We got lots of triangles

[@IPpainting]

it is not though

[@Monz_f]

Vox has such a unique way of making their videos, i love this channel 🔥

[@paulboujabbour2015]

Sooooo minecraft is made out of triangles.....right?

[@hikari_no_yume]

Yes. The squares are broken into two triangles.

[@joonasfi]

@@hikari_no_yume knows what's up

[@kanva4]

I don't think so

[@xd-games9748]

@@hikari_no_yume I am not sure. When you export a Minecraft world into .obj file and import it into blender you get get quadratic planes and not triangles. I think triangles are only used in komplex geometry, but I am not sure.

[@NigelEmmerton]

@@xd-games9748 yeah it's showing you squares (quads) but the software still sees that mesh as triangles. Quads are just easier to work with.

[@stevensamuel4634]

For most 3D motion graphics, you can make a mesh a lot easier with triangles

[@MikeNosa]

What about minecraft

[@Max-up8vj]

You can form a rectange out of 2 triangles.

[@tiagogobbi3610]

OMG!! Very mind blowing video!! At least to me, that like grafic designs, this video is awesome! Thank you to up load, Vox! :))

[@roberth1328]

Talks entirely about polygons, doesn’t once mention that they’re called polygons 🤔

[@Mate_Antal_Zoltan]

this is Vox, their audience probably doesn't know any fancy terms like polygon or computer

[@spaceman-pe5je]

@@Mate_Antal_Zoltan ? Game devs refer to them as tri, not polygons unless it's specifically 4+ sided.

[@renaigh]

@@Mate_Antal_Zoltan I'm surprised you know how to spell "computer"

[@Mate_Antal_Zoltan]

@@renaigh why is that, may I ask?

[@invaliduser9395]

There is a huge difference between 3D modeling and video games. I make and sell models for a living and usually you model in squares because they are easier to work with and performance isn’t what you are looking for when modeling. Square vertices are also way easier to hide.